Harry Truman’s Mama...gotta love her!

Mrs. Truman never forgot the burning, looting and thorough destruction of western Missouri by Union forces. After the War, when her son, Harry Truman was invited to dinner by a prominent family in Kansas City, a family who had profited handsomely by the war, Mrs. Truman made the following remark: 

“When you go there, turn the silverware over and check the hallmark, it’s probably ours!!!!”

Martha Ellen Young was born in Jackson County, Missouri, on November 25, 1852, to Solomon Young, a successful farmer who also had a business running Conestoga wagon trains along the Overland Trail, and his wife Harriet Louisa Gregg. The family were Southern loyalists during the War and several relatives served in the Confederate Army. 

In later life, Martha told of how a band of Union-supporting Jayhawkers destroyed her family's farm one day in 1861, then came again in 1863 when the family was ordered to vacate their home within 15 days by General Ewing’s General Order 11 and forced to move to Platte County, Missouri until after the war. This harsh treatment left Martha with a lifelong resentment for the winning Union side in the war, and she was well-known for her Confederate sympathies (so much so that it was reported that when she first visited the White House in 1945, she refused to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom.